The United Nations climate conference on Friday began its final week with negotiators expected to zoom in on the future of fossil fuels on a dangerously warming planet.

"It's go-time for governments at COP28 this week," U.N. Climate Chief Simon Stiell said at a press event Friday.

For the sixth month in a row, Earth set a new monthly record for heat, and also added the hottest autumn to the litany of record-breaking heat this year, the European climate agency calculated.

And with only one month left, 2023 is on the way to smashing the record for hottest year.

The mood is about to shift, the hours grow longer and the already high sense of urgency somehow amp up even more as the United Nations climate summit heads into its final week.

Every sentence, every word — especially those about the future elimination of planet-warming fossil fuels — will matter at the U.N. conference in oil-built Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Professional negotiators who have been working on getting options into shape will turn over their work to senior national officials, many at minister levels, who will have to make the tough political choices.

Israeli environmental experts have called on the defense establishment to carefully weigh the long-term environmental implications of reported plans to flood the immense network of tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater to flush the Hamas militants out.

Quoting U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the Israeli army last month set up five large water pumps near the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, which are capable of flooding the tunnels within weeks by pumping thousands of cubic meters of water per hour into them.

This year's United Nations climate talks may have seen record numbers registered to attend, but activists who have spent years demonstrating at the annual event say their space to voice their demands is shrinking year on year.

Held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates — where broad laws tightly restrict speech — climate activists have been protesting at COP28's Blue Zone, which is considered international territory. Demonstrators say there have always been strict regulations for protests at COPs, but they say actions this year have been further limited in terms of the number of people allowed to participate and which climate issues they're allowed to address on any given day. It's a stark contrast, activists say, to the growing presence of the fossil fuel industry, where those linked to the industry number around 1,400, according to an Associated Press analysis.

After a first-day blur of rare quick action and agreement, negotiators at a critical United Nations climate summit Wednesday finished up their first week in a more familiar place for them: the murky middle where momentum and roadblocks intertwine.

"Negotiations, as are often the case, are a mixed picture right now. We see big differences between individual states in some areas," German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said, "but there is a will to make progress."

The United Nations weather agency is reporting that glaciers shrank more than ever from 2011 and 2020 and the Antarctic ice sheet lost 75 percent more compared to the previous ten years, as it released its latest stark report about the fallout on the planet from climate change.

The World Meteorological Organization served up more evidence of what scientists already know – the Earth is heating – on Tuesday, but this time looking at the trend over a longer period with its latest Decadal State of the Climate report.

Majestic cedar trees towered over dozens of Lebanese Christians gathered outside a small mid-19th century chapel hidden in a mountain forest to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, the miracle where Jesus Christ, on a mountaintop, shined with light before his disciples.

The sunset's yellow light coming through the cedar branches bathed the leader of Lebanon's Maronite Church, Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, as he stood at a wooden podium and delivered a sermon. Then the gathering sang hymns in Arabic and the Aramaic language.

Heavy snowfall has hit the Russian capital, disrupting traffic on roads and flights in and out of three Moscow airports, officials and media reported on Monday.

The snowfall that began Sunday and continued overnight has brought an additional 23 centimeters (nine inches) to already high levels of snow in Moscow, according to deputy mayor Pyotr Biryukov. About 135,000 people and 18,000 pieces of equipment were involved in the snow-clearing effort.

International climate talks turned to a power game on Friday as dozens of world leaders took turns bemoaning the pain of an overheating planet, but two of the world's most powerful men — President Joe Biden of the U.S. and China's President Xi Jinping — were glaringly absent.

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, a top oil producer, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, whose biggest cities are regularly choked under poor air, as well as Presidents Emmanuel Macron of France, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey were among more than 170 world leaders set to address the United Nations climate conference in Dubai over the next two days. The idea is to try to keep the planet from heating too much because of humankind's actions.